Season 5, Episode 4: Constructed Categories: Syriac Christians and the Immigration Act of 1924
Reverb Effect
One person, missionary EW McDowell, influenced the fate of Syriac Christians ahead of the US Immigration Act of 1924. In this episode, Hannah Roussel interviews James Wolfe about McDowell, whose writings and testimony before Congress opened up the dialectics about the nature of the category “Asiatic.”
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Season 5, Episode 3: “Peace to the World”: Lessons from the Soviet Antiwar Underground
Reverb Effect
Alexander McConnell talks with Olga Medvedkova, a Soviet antiwar activist whose arrest garnered worldwide attention in 1983. In light of the two-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, what can we learn from Medvedkova and the Soviet peace movement?
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Season 5, Episode 2: Waiting with Mozart
Reverb Effect
Join Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1777 as he waits, in an aristocrat’s antechamber in Munich, for a conversation that could change his life. What did it mean to wait in the past? Who waited? How did it shape society and culture, and how did it define social interactions?
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Season 5, Episode 1: Curating the Remnants of Enslavement: A Conversation with Jason Young
Reverb Effect
In this episode, Paige Newhouse interviews Jason Young, co-curator of Hear Me Now: the Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a traveling exhibit housed at the University of Michigan Museum of Art centering enslaved artisans and the stoneware they produced.
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Season 4, Episode 3: Clesippus and the Candelabrum: Imagining Disability in Ancient Rome
Reverb Effect
The funerary inscription of Clesippus tells an impressive story of illustrious honors and administrative achievements in Ancient Rome. But there is another story, one of a man who navigated slavery, disability, and the sexual advances of the woman who owned him.
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Season 4, Episode 2: Forging Property from Struggle in South Africa
Reverb Effect
In 1911, a contested horse race sparked one of the largest movements by Black South Africans to reclaim colonized land. How does the history of the Native Farmers Association offer a glimpse into alternate futures of property ownership in South Africa?
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Season 4, Episode 1: Laboring for the Puerto Rican Vote
Reverb Effect
What happens when ten Puerto Rican men try to register to vote in 1950s Connecticut? Their eligibility is contested, and Democrats and Republicans become embroiled in a heated debate that ends at the Connecticut Superior Court. The ten Puerto Rican men, however, get lost at the wayside … we don’t even know all ten of their names. How much of their story can we uncover? In this episode, public historian Elena Marie Rosario sifts through archival records to recreate the story of these ten men, while also paying attention to how underlying themes of colonialism, ethnicity, and politics...
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Season 3, Episode 4: The Two Monsieurs
Reverb Effect
In 1836, two tailors transformed the fashion industry forever when they opened the first chemiserie, a shirt store, in Paris. Their radical feat? They tailored a shirt. In this episode, John Finkelberg tells the story of how Monsieurs Pierret and Lami-Housset essentially invented the precursor to the modern button-down shirt. Within a few years, these garments were one of the most sought-after luxury goods. Created by expert men, these revolutionary new products embodied new notions of masculinity developing in nineteenth century Paris. Except one of the tailors, Monsieur Pierret, was actually...
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Season 3, Episode 3: The Real Housewives of Medieval London
Reverb Effect
In medieval London, survivors of the Black Death found themselves living in a world that was both very familiar and also very different. The loss of so many people created a severe labor shortage, forcing employers to raise wages. With higher wages, more people could purchase more items, live in spacious homes, and employ domestic workers to help care for these spaces and possessions. In the century before the Plague, such domestic labor was primarily a male enterprise. However, the labor shortage created by the Plague made gender roles expensive, and households experimented with...
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Season 3, Episode 2: Navigating Pregnancy: A Century of Prenatal Care
Reverb Effect
Why do we have the prenatal visit schedule that we have today? Where did it come from? Why hasn’t the schedule changed in nearly 100 years? Dive in with Dr. Alex Peahl and Professor Joel Howell.
info_outlineIn what ways can a look be unsettling? Intimidating? Might it be dangerous? How does one study the history of an act so fleeting, and so difficult to record?
PhD candidate Molly Brookfield studies the history of men's harassment of women in public places, in other words, street harassment. She’s interested in behaviors like catcalling or ogling, actions often considered trivial or even complimentary, rather than overtly violent or threatening.
We’ll uncover the history of the more insidious behaviors men often perform in public space. Behaviors that leave no visible mark yet have the power to disrupt a woman’s daily life. But is this really a story of the past? We’ll consider the alarming persistence of such behaviors, and their transition into an accepted, sometimes even normal aspect of urban life.